Horror

Vacation of Terror 2: Diabolical Birthday (1991)

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vacationterror2Epic mullet intact, Pedro Fernández is the lone cast member of René Cardona III’s Vacation of Terror to return for the wonderfully titled sequel, Vacation of Terror 2: Diabolical Birthday, again as Julio. Alternately (and unimaginatively) known as Pesadilla Sangrienta (Bloody Nightmare), this second helping may be an improvement over the original, but let the record show that no one takes a vacation.

Now under the guiding hand of another director with Roman numerals in his name, Pedro Galindo III, the Mexico-made monstrosity puts Julio in the antiques biz. What to his rapey eyes should appear in his store one day but teen tart Mayra (unimonikered singer Tatiana). He gives her a free plant worth 60,000 pesos in hopes of getting into her pantalones; instead, he gets an invitation to hear her sing that night at the birthday party for her 7-year-old sister, Tania (Renata del Río).

vacationterror21The shindig is horror-themed — because if there’s one thing all little girls love, it’s monsters — and being thrown at the movie studio owned by their father, producer Roberto Mondragón (Joaquín Cordero, Wrestling Women vs. the Murderous Robot). Mayra takes the stage to belt a tune whose pure pop pep belies such grim, gibberish lyrics as “Boys, boys, boys / Clumsy and aggressive / Poor boys / Neurotics, all lost / Boys, boys, boys / Super guys / Surprised by Sunday crisis.”

Then Papa Mondragón wheels out a grande-sized strawberry cake, underneath which hides the creepy doll from the first film. Consuming a swiped handful of the cake causes the doll to lose its hair and shed its skin, thus revealing its true self: a goopy demon with horns, tail and all. (Don’t question it.) Tania vanishes within a wall and Julio swoops into he-man mode, strutting around the grounds in a trench coat, as if he were Van Helsing … but played by comedian Paul Rodriguez.

Making cameos in this frivolous spectacle of special effects — “special” as in “special education” — are Tom Cruise and Heather Thomas, albeit via posters: respectively, the Cocktail one-sheet and the smashed-pancake/white-bikini shot that got me all hot and bothered at the onset of puberty. You know, when I was neurotic, all lost, surprised by Sunday crisis. —Rod Lott

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Mystery

The Psychic (1977)

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psychicWhile driving through a tunnel, wealthy newlywed Virginia Ducci (Jennifer O’Neill, Scanners) experiences a terrifying vision of a woman being walled up, “Cask of Amontillado”-style, by a man with a limp. It’s hardly Virginia’s first brush with clairvoyance, having “seen” her own mother’s cliffside plunge to suicide 18 years earlier. (Never does The Psychic top that prologue sequence in shocks.)

As a surprise for her husband (Gianni Garko, Devil Fish), Virginia plans to restore a mansion he hasn’t used since bedding babe after babe in his playboy bachelor days. To her horror, she recognizes a wall there as the one from her blackout dream; sure enough, inside is the skeleton of a female believed to have been in her 20s. When it’s revealed that the mystery woman was one of Mr. Ducci’s numerous conquests, Virginia works with her shrink and authorities to prove her spouse’s innocence and find the true killer, not to mention decipher the remainder of her clue-filled hallucination.

psychic1That’s the problem with The Psychic, a mostly mainstream effort from excess specialist Lucio Fulci (The Beyond): It spells out its own denouement with alarming simplicity. If viewers pay any reasonable degree of attention, they’ll have the ending solved by the second scene — not an exaggeration. I thought surely Fulci’s story would have more to it than that. It did not.

While she is quite the knockout, O’Neill’s abilities as an actress stand in indirect proportion to her looks. Fulci’s camera asks little of her but to stand still with eyes widened and mouth agape, so he can zoom in for a close-up. Over. And over. And over. Just because his film is about a psychic and titled after a psychic doesn’t mean it should settle for predictability. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Belphégor: Phantom of the Louvre (2001)

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belphegorAs he would do in 2004’s Adventures of Arsène Lupin, director Jean-Paul Salomé updates a French pulp favorite in Belphégor: Phantom of the Louvre, based on Arthur Bernède’s 1927 mystery novel. Perhaps owing to the success of Stephen Sommers’ American Mummy franchise, this treatment is first and foremost a fantasy.

In a prologue set in 1935 Egypt, a 3,000-year-old tomb is unearthed, with a sarcophagus intact. Near instantly, the mummy unleashes a virus that causes hallucinations with anyone who dares stare directly into its eyes, like Medusa. Said hallucinations are based upon the individual’s fear, from dogs to needles, and can lead to suicide. In present-day France, the mummy’s spirit exits its dirt-dry corpse, enters the electrical system and causes all kinds of havoc throughout the world-famous Louvre Museum.

belphegor1Per an on-the-case inspector (Michel Serrault, Diabolique), the floating specter is a belphégor — that is, Satan in human form. Whatever it is, it steals Egyptian amulets from the Louvre’s Egyptology collection and possesses the body of an on-the-rebound woman (Sophie Marceau, The World Is Not Enough) after she chases her cat inside the museum. While she’s soaking in the tub, the spirit makes her scribble hieroglyphics with bath crayons. It also makes her have wild sex with the electrician (Frédéric Diefenthal, Luc Besson’s Taxi comedies).

Belphégor is ridiculously silly, but knows it; why else would a frightened Julie Christie (Don’t Look Now) be made to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” in an elevator? With its overly convoluted story, inconsistent computer effects and game cast, Salomé’s film is right in line and on par with Russell Mulcahy’s Tale of the Mummy, another gauze-wrapped project that’s problematic, but nonetheless a mild kick to watch. —Rod Lott

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Sex

The Kiss of Her Flesh (1968)

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kissfleshBoasts slut slayer Richard Jennings at the beginning of The Kiss of Her Flesh, “I do a service to all mankind with each jezebel I kill!” Essentially, the exclamation could double as a plot summary for Kiss, the final chapter of Michael Findlay’s depraved, shake-and-ache trilogy. How depraved? We hear the above while he helps himself to the bare breasts of the woman he’s just tire-ironed into strippable submission. But that’s nothing.

After the credits sequence, in which the titles are handwritten on pieces of paper cut into lip shapes and placed over a nude female body, Jennings (Findlay himself) resumes his misogynist mission of murder, slaughtering every lady who reminds him of his cheating wife, which is every lady. That includes the one who:
• is tied up in a kitchen and menaced with a lobster claw;
• receives a house call from a “doctor” (Jennings in his “master of disguise” thing) who performs a “thorough examination” on the tooth marks surrounding her no-no hole and prescribes a morning douche, which he’s spiked with acid;
• hitchhikes her way into Jennings’ station wagon, only to be blowtorched for her troubles; and
• performs oral stimulation on Jennings as ordered, which proves deadly because … well, let’s him tell us: “My poisoned semen should take care of you well enough. So long, sucker!”

kissflesh1Jennings is nothing if not quick with the quips. Topping the simple “Burn, slut!” and the “I will slice you in two like a piece of cheese!” threat is this baffler spoken to the aforementioned seafood victim: “We’ll cut away these underpants to more easily get at the sauce!”

The Kiss of Her Flesh kinda sorta attempts a story, with Jennings being pursued by angry Maria (Uta Erickson, The Ultimate Degenerate) after he offs the best friend of her (incestuous) sister. Maria begins this trip of vengeance directly after introducing her boyfriend (Earl Hindman, aka Wilson of TV’s Home Improvement) to the pleasures of anal beads, because you’ve gotta have priorities. Findlay clearly did: Work out his twisted fantasies on film, at the risk of lucidity and other narrative crutches preferred by moviegoers — or at least those not wearing raincoats. —Rod Lott

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Reading Material

It Came from 1957: A Critical Guide to the Year’s Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films

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itcamefrom1957It’s not as if 1957 was a banner year for genre movies, but that hasn’t stopped Rob Craig from dedicating an entire book to the 57 such flicks that invaded theaters over those 12 months — 11, really, as January stood barren. The result is It Came from 1957: A Critical Guide to the Year’s Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, a McFarland & Company release in trade paperback.

Craig takes a chronological tour down memory lane, reviewing such B-level works as Tobor the Great, The Black Scorpion and The Brain from Planet Arous, whose poster imagery provides the cover art. On a rare occasion, there’s even a bona fide classic, with arguably none greater than The Incredible Shrinking Man or The Thing from Another World.

With a modicum of plot info (thank goodness), each entry is concentrated on actual criticism and insight. That would be enough as is, but until it reaches page 50, the book spends time putting the reader in the historical perspective, so one can see how the times shaped the entertainment. In this case, the Atomic Age was in full force, with TV threatening theaters and women eager to shed their “baby factory” labels.

Some readers have taken umbrage at this initial section and casting the light of politics at the silver screen, viewing the exercise as “lefty infused nonsense,” as one put it. I didn’t get that. Craig may overanalyze a film or appear inconsistent in his praise and brickbats, but the book is — as labeled — “a critical guide.” In other words, the viewpoint is his and his alone; just because you don’t agree with it doesn’t make it wrong (or vice versa). If reading reviews isn’t your thing, this isn’t your book. I do, and while the author is far from a Roger Ebert, his approach remains entertaining enough for your time, provided you’re really into this era of sci-fi.

I like the concept of devoting a book to one year of film; it would be neat to see Craig continue the concept. But really, if you were to read only one 2013 cult-movie book by the man, I’d suggest Gutter Auteur: The Films of Andy Milligan over this one. —Rod Lott

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